Free Knitting Patterns, Instructions, Projects & Designs.

If you read my blog, you know that I recently knit a February Lady Sweater in a ridiculously short amount of time. I garter stitched my way into bleary-eyed mental exhaustion. So when I got to the instruction that called for working 41 increases evenly over 239 stitches…well, I almost cried. The few brain cells that were left knew that I could pull off the math if I had to, but I might well end up with 41 mistakes instead.

Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requiring iOS 4.0 or later, the app is an ingenious tool for figuring those tricky “knit evenly” instructions. It’s very simple to tell the calculator whether you’re working with increases or decreases, and whether you’re knitting in the round or flat. You type in the number of stitches you’re increasing/decreasing across, then tell it the number of increases/decreases you’ll need…

and it tells you the answer, in your choice of formats – a simple spacing out between two given stitch counts to either side, or the more complicated but also more evenly distributed :

Being the stickler type, I favor Option 2, the more evenly distributed method. The calculator not only shows me the written instructions, but also gives me a way to keep track of which increase I’m on. I just set my iPhone or iPad next to me, and touch the little red squares each time I complete a step. See the little arrow above the third square? That indicates where I am in the instructions. As I finish a step, the little light turns red, and the pointer automatically advances to the next step. Very cool, and well worth the $1.99 price!